AirPods Pro Hands-On: The Noise Cancellation Is Legit

Apple’s AirPods Pro is now available, and one of the highlights is that their in-ear design is impressive. However, if you have had trouble fitting the AirPods into your ears before, you will be disappointed to learn that the issue has not been fixed.

The earbuds come with silicon tips of three different sizes in the box. There is also an app on iOS to help users test whether they have got the best fit. What the app does is to play some music and then make a comparison between what the internal microphone is taking in, meaning what you hear, and what the driver speaker is playing. If the difference is too large, the app will tell you to adjust the AirPods Pro or use another pair of tips.

The app might become handy, but at the end of the day, the real question is to find the size that you feel most comfortable wearing. Some people might find that each of their ears fit in another size, so if you have difficulty finding a good seal, you might want to try doing that.

To avoid air building up inside the ears, the AirPods Pro has a vent system to make sure that the pressure on both sides of the earbuds is equal.

The earbuds also come equipped with a system of microphones that detect ambient sounds so that they can cancel it. The AirPods Pro is good at noise cancellation, not to the level of a pair of over-ear headphones but one of the best among the in-ear earbuds.

The noise-canceling function works separately on each pod and if you turn this function on, you may have around 4.5 hours of continuous listening. And as with other AirPods, the case has enough juice to power the AirPods Pro for an addition of 24 hours.

If you want to control the NC, you can do so in the Control Center, Settings, with Siri, or via the force sensor on each of the earbuds. The tap has departed on this latest generation of AirPods and in its place, we have the squeeze.

One squeeze will pause or play the music, squeeze for the second time and the current track will be skipped, the third time will take you back to the previous track. If you hold down, the earbuds will switch between the transparency and noise cancellation mode.

The former mode will let ambient sounds in. Whenever you turn on this mode, you will hear a chime to indicate the change. The vent system will allow you to talk to other people in the regular volume without shouting or accidentally speaking too loud. It should be activated whenever you commute to ensure safety.

According to Apple, AirPods Pro comes with custom-made amplifiers and drivers. However, the star of the show is Ambient EQ. With an internal microphone, the earbuds will adjust the music 200 times each second so that you have the best experience possible based on the shape of your ears. When compared with the previous version of AirPods, the Pro variant does sound better, might be because of Ambient EQ.

AirPods have never been good at bass but anyone will have to admit that there is an improvement. With the price of $249, the AirPods have entered a head-on competition with other earbuds at that price bracket, and there are a lot of offers at the price range that have a wonderful performance, like Echo Buds, Sony’s 1000X M3s, and Powerbeats Pro.